The Trent Bridge Inn – Something from the Grill section of the menu please

The Trent Bridge Inn (The T.B.I) is a timeless classic located next to the Trent Bridge Cricket ground, home of Nottinghamshire Cricket and occasional home of England. There is a long history regarding the pub, the cricket and even Notts County who once played there for a while. You can spend time googling all that so I am not going to put it all here, but I will relate my personal history with the pub. Back in the mid 80’s when me and my mates were hitting our 18th birthdays we used to drink half pints of beer in the back room, in those days we had two choices this side of the river at the TBI or over the river at the Town Arms, When the Town Arms became the Aviary I got a job collecting glasses there, and some of my mates got jobs collecting glasses at the TBI. Then our personal rivalries began and I didn’t drink in here for ages, there were plenty of unprintable shananigans that could make an excellent story.

Moving swiftly to present time I find myself living on the banks of river within view of Trent Bridge and but a short walk along the towpath to the door of the TBI. It is like the years have rolled back and I can go back to one of my old haunts. So although these days despite it being one of the pubs in the Wetherspoon’s chain, it is still a pub that I want to frequent.

They do serve a lot of standard beers from the Wetherspoon’s pub selection but look past that if you can with me and take heart that they have a dedicated beer from the Nottingham Brewery called unsurprisingly Trent Bridge Ale. This really is quite a decent beer, it is described as ‘A light and crisp golden ale with floral hoppy notes.’ but I think that is a poor description to be honest. I don’t find it to be too hoppy at all, I would say that is a nice drinkable session beer that is light and easy on the palate. But you know what? I don’t work for a brewery so ‘what they said’

Seeing as how this pub should be so much more than the sum of its wetherspoons parts we decided to go big and look at the upper end of the menu into the Grill section where the prices were a little higher and see what the pub could offer us to make it forget that it was a Wetherspoons Menu.

What did we find?

The first thing we ordered was the Gammon and Eggs. It was not too bad an effort, the Gammon itself was juicy and had that nice saltiness that I recall fondly when I order this dish. It’s light was slightly hidden by placing two fried eggs on top of it, but that was kind of OK as they still had runny yolks that oozed nicely over the top when cut into. The chips were plentiful but not that exciting, the peas overdone and the tomato was not needed. The small field mushroom was decent and would be benefitted from a few more friends on the plate as it felt like it was almost an afterthought. So we have positive reports on the Gammon and the Eggs, which to be fair were in the title of the dish. The rest was just basic pub food which was to be expected here.

The Surf and Turf

The next choice was the Surf and Turf (Scampi and Steak). I liked the steak, I asked for it to be cooked Medium and it was cooked Medium. I didn’t mind the pub food chips although there were too many for me to eat. The Scampi was plentiful but I was not too excited by them. The first few were OK but they got a bit boring after that. They seemed to fall apart a bit too easily and I was feeling the moment between the freezer and the deep fryer with each bite. I probably should have just had a steak on its own. Overall the meal was kind of OK, if it had just been £9.99 I would have been fairly happy but it wasn’t it was nearer to £12 so a tad overpriced.

So in summary the experience from the Grill section was a bit mixed with highs and lows. The main thing I suppose is that we left full and we had two large meals for about £20.

Despite the average dining experience I am still a big fan of the TBI, I just need to remember where I am when I am planning a dining extravaganza.

Note to self, next time just drink the excellent Trent Bridge Ale from the Nottingham Brewery.

The Trent Bridge Inn is located at 2 Radcliffe Rd in West Bridgford, Nottingham. Right on the South side of the Trent Bridge crossing by the Cricket Ground